It has been a year since the 2023 elections, which were deemed by many to be the final battle to save democracy in Poland. While PiS had been removed from power though, things are not going as well as some expected, and many Poles are disappointed with the style of government presented by Donald Tusk.
Click HERE to read the previous part of the series
Click HERE to see all the chapters of the series so far.
True, many things that were impossible before now can be done. For example, a political activist who was harassed by the police during PiS government was finally able to make the police officers and prosecutors personally responsible for that to face the justice system. It was impossible before, as the documents were mysteriously going missing. The government itself also tries to bring functionaries of the previous regime to justice. PiS, of course, has no grounds to defend its actions, so they are seeking formal loopholes. Like when Marcin Romanowski, who was responsible for the alleged embezzlement of money from the Justice Fund (a recurring topic in that series) tried to hide behind an immunity granted to him by the European Union institutions, who, after this immunity was stripped from him, now claims, that the prosecutors accuse him also of different things, and therefore, I guess, EU decision of striping him of his immunity somehow becomes void.
The Justice Fund embezzlement is possibly the biggest financial crime in Polish history. The journalist investigations uncover still new and new ways that the public money was syphoned out of the state coffers using this institution. And that does not mean that there is a shortage of other alleged embezzlement cases. Just look at this fragment from today’s Oko.press website, where the whole “investigations” section only features articles about how PiS was abusing public funds:
Sometimes it was a well-created conveyor belt transporting public money into private hands, like when the government created a special fund to sponsor shady foundations run by their cronies and “patriotic organisations”, allowing them to use taxpayer’s money to purchase real estate with no strings attached. But sometimes it was just burning through money due to the PiS activist’s pride, stupidity and total lack of respect for the public funds – like the case of former Children Rights Ombudsman, who was buying himself fancy cars – we wrote about it in one of the previous chapters – or a chairwoman of the notoriously underfunded Building Inspectorate, who over the period of two years spent over 60 000 zł on make-up.
And sometimes there has to be no other option than just pure stupidity. For when the newly created “Institute of the National’s Thought Heritage” (Instytut Dziedzictwa Myśli Narodowej), one of the pointless institutions created by PiS seemingly just so their cronies have some cosy jobs and access to public money has purchased Ignacy Paderewski’s piano for a mere 300 000 zł. Except it was not a Paderewski’s piano, which came as no surprise to anyone – it is very well documented what pianos Ignacy Paderewski was playing, which pieces he owned, and the 1850’s Bösendorfer was not one of those. Even the government’s own expert refused to give a definitive answer when asked for the opinion (perhaps because the government asked a manuscript expert from the National Library and he simply told them “I can’t say, you need to get someone who knows something about musical instruments”).
But I guess even this expert could spot a fake if decided to investigate the piano in person. Due to clerical error – or deliberate falsification – the documents were giving the piano serial number as 4219, while in reality, the number was 24219. This missing digit changes everything, as it indicates the piano has been manufactured in 1927. Such pianos are worth 10 to 30,000 zł today.
But why they decide to purchase this piano at all? Paderewski’s instruments are well documented, and his pianos, both Steinway & Sons and Érard, are already owned by the National Museum of Poland, and his celeste is on display in the History Museum in Lausanne… Still, they still claim it was worth it. Maybe the piano was not really owned by Paderewski, but the fact they bought it “encourages young people to get into music”.
It’s obvious that bringing all the people people responsible for embezzling, or simply mismanaging, public funds under the PiS government will take years and years. So far, the situation is not easy, as first there is a pressing need to untangle the justice system infested with illegally appointed judges and prosecutors loyal to PiS. And this proves to be more difficult than many expected. When the new government was taking over public media de facto by force, it had already been criticized also by the people on the Democratic side of the political scene. There is no good option – I used a comparison to a situation when a wrecker truck is recovering a lorry that is stuck in a roadside ditch upside down. There is no way this can be done neatly, it will be messy, and the wrecker would have to be placed at an angle that, under normal circumstances, would at best incur a parking violation ticket.
Fixing the justice system is a more delicate process, and yet due to nature of the matter, it is more important to do everything by the book – so it could not be contested in the future. Here, new justice minister Adam Bodnar looks up to international institutions for guidance, and sometime their opinion is not exactly what he hoped for. For example recent opinion of Venice Commission states, that the judges appointed by illegal National Judiciary Council cannot be removed en-masse with just an act: every single case of such a judge should be investigated individually. This opinion is shared by the Helsinki Foundation for the Human Rights.
This of course nearly brought some PiS politicians to orgasm, although the positions they have to take in order to be able to use it are so break-neck that they surely could not be found in Kamasutra. Sebastian Kaleta, one of the main engineers of PiS “reforms” aimed at imposing party control over the justice system wrote a long essay on Twitter, in which he argues, that the Venice Commission is not worth listening to because they have no idea what they are talking about (after all, they were very adamant that what PiS does to the justice system is totally unacceptable), but since they criticize Adam Bodnar it might be worth to listen to them this time, although of course, PiS won’t treat this organization seriously, unlike Tusk government, who does value its opinion, which should completely disqualify them, as anyone who listens to Venice Commission should not be taken seriously…
But while the new government is trying to untangle the damage and talks a lot about introducing new standards into politics, their actions seem to be not so decisive. It had emerged that they are already handing cosy jobs to their own cronies, for example in the state-owned National Lottery company. Some of their actions, while not technically illegal, also put a shade on the moral superiority claimed by Donald Tusk, like when a couple of his MPs were found to be both claiming housing allowance – despite the fact that they are a married couple that lives together and that the wife owns a house just on the outskirts of Warsaw. She claims they need so much money because the flat they rent is in a “prestigious location” and therefore costs so much that even two allowances don’t fully cover the rental costs.
Tusk’s tendency for strong-handed micromanagement in reaction to public outcry also led to a heavily criticized move. When a company started to sell alcoholic drinks in squeezy tubs, very similar to those used by baby food manufacturers, it sparked a media outcry after Speaker of the Parliament Szymon Hołownia called it “a pure evil”, after pointing out that this packaging might suggest the product is addressed to children (I can’t wait for him to learn that alcohol is already offered in the same drinking cans as fizzy drinks or that one can buy chocolates with alcoholic filling!). The company denied that it was their intention and removed the product from the market, and yet the chief of the National Anti-Addiction Centre, a highly respected professional, was forced to quit his job – despite the fact that nobody was able to say what exactly he should do about this product, as trying new kinds of packaging to sell alcoholic drinks in is not illegal.
But while Tusk’s government trips over their own feet like that while trying to please the public, they do much worse at meeting public expectations in the matters that are really important. The long-awaited changes to the law regarding LGBT rights got stuck in the mud (with the exception of a minor change in procedures to facilitate sex change in courts – in Poland, a transgender person has to sue their own parents – even if they are supportive of their transition – or the state – if their parents are deceased. But the change is really minuscule – the procedure remains in place, it’s just the waiting times will be reduced and the person formally suing their parents will now be allowed to sit next to them in the courtroom). The politicians no longer talk about abortion rights or marriage equality – using a pretext that President Andrzej Duda will veto it anyway. However it is obvious that Andrzej Duda will veto any changes to the legal system that would attempt to undo changes to the legal system made by PiS, and yet somehow this is not a good enough reason to abandon the government’s work in that field.
The transparency NGO’s Panoptykon, investigating matters of digital arms and government surveillance alarms, that there are no changes when it comes to those fields and that Tusk’s crew seems to have no interest at all in undoing changes to law made by their predecessors allowing for the government for, basically, spying on its own citizens without any supervision. It also does nothing to counteract the propaganda role played by Social Media (unless we count a mass movement of pro-government social media activists run by Roman Giertych – see last chapter). The sacking of a highly respected chief of the government institution that researches AI matters was also met with widespread criticism.
But the biggest disappointment for many is the government’s u-turn on the matter of the refugee crisis at the Belarusian border. Just two years ago Donald Tusk said: “One of the biggest villainy that happened in Poland was a deliberate operation that aimed to put an equal sign between effective law enforcement, including asylum rights observance, and protection of the Polish border and between merciless treatment of those people, those women, those refugees, who need help to survive”. Similarly today’s minister of justice Adam Bodnar just over a year ago gave an interview to my Polish language podcast Lewackie Pitolenie where he was very adamant that those, who mistreat refugees on the border and deny them rights to submit their asylum claim should be met with the full force of the justice system. He called it a blatant violation of human rights and went so far as to compare their behaviour with the worst crimes of the XX century.
I’ve reached out to Minister Bodnar for comment. His press service tried to dismiss me by telling me “the border issue is not in the scope of the Ministry of Justice” and then, when I insisted, asked me for a phone number promising I would be contacted by Minister Bodnar personally – which never happened. But another politician of the ruling coalition reached out to me: Franek Sterczewski MP, who during the initial phases of the refugee crisis was very active, to the point of personally trying to break the police cordon in order to deliver humanitarian help to stranded people felt offended by my claim on Twitter that he does nothing and sent me a DM in which he informs me that “they are doing what they can” and that “he is leading parliamentary team for migrations” and “fighting for systemic charges”.
I am sorry to say that, but it seems they have to fight their own boss, as Donald Tusk just recently announced that he wants to make it possible to suspend the right to asylum altogether – which will obviously go against many international treaties Poland is a member of. If you are telling me the truth, Mr Sterczewski, I am afraid you’re up for the really big war.
Photo of Donald Tusk: Arno Mikkor, CC 2.0 via Flickr
This piece was written for Britské Listy
